Blog Comments & Posts

Truly a great share John. I'm an agency leader and I know that when the underlying business model is clear and sound, it really allows us to do better work, with greater communication, which makes for happier people.

One of my most valued team members just created a set of Google Spreadsheets for our agency. We presented it to the entire team on Friday. I've asked him to take a look at yours and if we have any feedback to share, we'll absolutely do it. Otherwise, I'm sure we'll learn tons from yours. :)

Great post, David. Totally makes sense to leave reviews with your Google+ local page. Quick question: any reason why you chose to create a Google+ local page as opposed to a Google+ Business (brand or company page)? From what we've researched, the lines in the sand are still really fuzzy with this one. Hopefully with the new dashboard upgrade this month it will all be sorted out.... fingers crossed!!

Just a few thoughts on this ... I can appreciate that "reverse engeineering" a sites backlink strategy has been and continues to be a viable opportunity for SEO'ers. I also understand what the tool does by essentially crawling and harvesting actionable data on a webpage for link building purposes.

My issue is where the "black hat" essentially comes into play. The screenshot from Majestic is a dead giveaway. The site topped out at aquiring 50,000 back links in a single month. So much for link velocity ... just at a quick glance I see 200,000 backlinks within a handful of months. There is no way a person or agency sat back and created this many backlinks.

So there already exists tools/resources (like scrape box) which focus on quantity rather than quality. In this example karma caught up ... but there seems to be a more systemic issue here and even the most honorable "white hat" SEO'ers cant compete with (at least in the short run).

Fantastic article! Especially as a relatively new SEO agency ... I used your post as a checklist of sorts to find opportunities we could leverage:

#1: Run Your Agency Like a Businessman - I 100% agree and I think our success thus far can be directly attributed to talking about conversions rather than ranking. On the flip side this meant our firm had to be way more "web" focused than we anticipated because most clients saw the increase in traffic and then wondered how we could help them improve conversion!

#2: It’s Harder to Get clients than to Keep Them - This is very real for us since were going through similar growing pains. This was mentioned in another comment but scalability is indeed a factor in leveraging your company. I would be interested in learning more about the work/time/effort involved in a $2-5k/month client to a $300k/quarter client and how you were able to leverage accordingly!

#3: Never Stop Building your Brand - I have attempted something like this in the past and the biggest mistake I made was trying to build/grow my business behind my computer. It was only after working for a massive company and talking to businesses directly that I realized just how clueless most businesses are about the internet. Almost 100% of our clients are acquired now because of networking and referrals ... not internet searches (but Canadian businesses are 5+ years behind the US).

#4: Keep Your Overhead Low - So easy to say to hard to do ... especially when the biggest expense is employees and/or draws. Fixed exenses remain low but variable expenses are harder to control especially when juggling sales with growth!

#5: Don’t Get Too Greedy - I think our whole business model is built around this concept ... but we need to balance business growth with cash flow. 1 massive client would give us the leverage to complete everything we need ... but is far from our 'target audience'. You need one heck of a bookkeeper/accountant to help monitor cash flow, profit margins, and expenses!

#6: Have Ironclad Contracts… that Automatically Renew - Here we totally disagree ... the best contract is no contract! If you are able to deliver the results you promise clients will be happy. We default to a month to month agreement ... no company/business should be help hostage to a contract for poor results!

#7: Pick a Niche and Dominate It - I think we have a solid understanding of our niche ... and where were located the opportunity is massive ... now to dominate it!

Thanks for the incredible post! Some good lessons and if nothing else a good reminder on what to focus on!

Just my 2 cents here but I was more of the impression that Mr Shankman wasnt bashing "Social Media Experts" who are actually experts ... he was bashing with the self-proclaimed title but were basically glorified profile-setter-uppers.
The rest of Mr Shankmans article focused on the expertise a "true" social media expert brings to the table ... ultimately concluding, and rightly so in my opinion, that whatever the "medium" it is a marketing job and marketing should directly impact revenue.

I actually attended this event and even though its months later I still laugh at how ... unique this presentation was. I know most of the event was recorded and am wondering if SEOmoz would be willing to post a short "teaser" about this.

To be honest this was really the highlight of the whole event for me and I am excited to see what more evolves from this ... I recall being completely lost for the 1st 1/2 of this presentation and then finally catching on towards the end that what Ben was suggesting is that the age old maxim of 30% on site and 70% off site could be myth and we are massively underestimating the value and potential of on site optimization.